HERALDS OF GOD
if Christianity once turned the world upside down, it can do the same to-day. But you are wrong to disregard the one true source of all strong action and effective power. You are wrong to think the human demand can ever be satisfied with improved communities and garden cities. You are wrong to think that the best economic Paradise will ever still the tumult of a heart that goes crying out for ever for 'a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God'." On the other hand, to those who stand for a predominantly otherworldly quietism, your Gospel of the Kingdom will declare: "You are right to dwell in the secret place of the Most High. You are right to walk with God as pilgrims and sojourners here, looking beyond this transitory scene to the bliss of life eternal. You are right to believe that to God alone belong the Kingdom, the power, and the glory. But you are wrong to lock yourselves up in that secret place of devotion. You are wrong to reduce religion to an unethical, sentimental irrelevance. You are wrong if, in the presence of social misery and injustice, you do not see Christ's eyes blazing like a flame of fire, nor hear His voice, like a trumpet, crying 'I will have mercy, and not sacrifice!'"
It is not within the scope of these Lectures to discuss Christianity and the social order. This only I will say. Carlyle once wrote a letter to Emerson, warning him against a philosophy of spiritual aloofness. "Alas, it is so easy to screw one's self up into high and ever higher altitudes of Transcendentalism, and see nothing
96
